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Just be brave for one second to get help

Alcoholics call it the moment of clarity. That sudden instant of self-awareness and realization when one can see a path out of turbulent waters.

For American Brian Cuban, it came sitting in a car outside a psychiatric hospital.

The previous days of his life had been erased by booze.

He had been there before. Cuban’s life had spun out of control. Body image and self-esteem issues as a boy triggered serious eating disorders.

Depression would follow, as did addictions to cocaine and alcohol. His own demons drove him to the brink of suicide.

“So I was sitting in the parking lot of this hospital. It was the second time I had been there. I was thinking to myself that unless something changes, unless I got help, there wouldn’t be a third trip,” Cuban said in an interview Wednesday.

“I wouldn’t survive.”

Cuban, the author of the book Shattered Image: My Triumph Over Body Dysmorhpic Disorder, was in St. Catharines Thursday evening to talk about his struggles with mental health and addictions issues.

He spoke at a mental health event at the Holiday Inn Parkway on Ontario St. focused on dispelling the stigma that so often shrouds mental health issues.

“Talking about it is part of my own recovery, which I have to live with every day. Every day is a process,” said Cuban, the younger brother of Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

“I’m not a doctor, OK, but if I can reach just one person, help just one person get help they need, then travelling and talking about it was completely worth it.”

Much of what Cuban talks about is aimed at dispelling the stigma that still surrounds the discussion of mental health in the public realm.

He knows about that stigma first hand.

For years, he suffered through body dysmorphic disorder — a condition that led him to develop deeply unhealthy body and self-image problems — which eventually manifested as eating disorders.

Culturally, however, both body dysmorphic and eating disorders are generally associated with girls and young women, not boys and men. The very idea of admitting to anyone he suffered from both was unthinkable for a long time.

“I told no one. Not even my family. Not even my therapist for a long time,” he said.

“At the time, I would rather admit I was a drug addict and an alcoholic than every admit I had an eating disorder because of the shame. Because men are supposed to be strong and not have to deal with that sort of thing. So you don’t say anything.”

But men are impacted by these conditions, and cannot get help for them unless they are willing to talk about it.

“Every time I do a talk, someone — men and women — will come and talk to me. Sometimes I have a good cry with them,” he said.

“And they will often tell me they can’t talk to anyone. And I ask them, ‘Who do you love?’ Talk to even one person that you love.

“Sometimes all you need is to be willing to put down your wall, even for just one second, and talk to someone to get you started,” he said.

Growing up, his mother constantly told him he was overweight. That he ate too much and was a “fat pig.” It was a message that lodged in Cuban’s mind and never really let go.

“I don’t blame my mother,” he said. “What she was saying to me was what she had been taught from her mother.”

The damage, however, was done.

Whenever he looked in the mirror, no matter his weight, Cuban saw an ugly, obese person looking back at him. He developed both anorexia and bulimia.

As he got older, his psychological self-image grew progressively worse. He coped by self-medicating with cocaine and alcohol. By the time he was 44, he nearly ended his own life and might well have gone through with it if he had not sought help.

“The bottom line is you have to take charge of your own recovery,” he said, now eight years past that day in the parking lot of the hospital.

“You have to be active about it. It is a process, and some days you will have setbacks. Some people have to start over. But you know what? That is OK.”